Almaty

Almaty is the largest city we had been to so far (other than the layover in Guangzhou) and will be the largest city we visit on the trip. Because of this, it has a slightly different vibe to the other cities we visited.

Our first “day” in Almaty wasn’t really in Almaty, it was getting to Almaty. We managed to cross the border into Kazakhstan at around midday before heading out for some lunch. I finally tried besh barmak (беш бармак) for the first time, and must say I was quite a bit fan. It is a pasta like noodle in a small amount of broth topped with sliced meat. We also had some plov, Manti and various other small foods in the restaurant on the border - all of which were great.

After lunch we found a minivan to drive us to Almaty and hit the road! It was a longer drive than expected, around 3 hours but all in all went pretty smoothly, other than the fact that our driver kept turning off the aircon despite it being 30 something degrees.

Once arriving at our hotel we spent a solid 30 minutes trying to access the room due to some translation miscommunication and a faulty door handle, but when we finally entered we were amazed by the views. The room was on the 16th floor and allowed us to watch over much of the city, and the mountains that dwarfed it in the background.

We headed out soon after arriving for a night at a club, given it was pretty much the only city on the trip with a nightclub. We met some lovely Germans who invited us to a hike the next day but unfortunately we couldn’t make it work in the end due to pre-existing plans.

These pre-existing plans involved heading to a Soviet-era bathhouse in the center of town which was pretty baller. There were 5 steam rooms, of three different varieties, including a finish sauna, a Turkish stream room and a Russian stream room, the later of which got up to 110°C while we were in it!

After relaxing there for a few hours we headed out to see some sights in the town, had some lunch and headed home. We needed a good night’s rest before our big day at Charyn Canyon.

Me, Harry, and the view from the hotel!What a cool cathedral!A little water fountain on our way to AlmatyI saw a green toilet

I had a job interview in the morning, so we managed to leave for the canyon around 10am, and given the traffic in Almaty was pretty rough it took a while to get out of the city. We saw some amazing plains on the way to the canyon, and ended up arriving at around 3, after some stops on the way.

A few of our group did some archery before we set sail on our hike. We were initially following a path but managed to get a touch off track (somewhat on purpose), but managed to get to our destination just fine after not too much time faffing around.

We headed back to the car, drove back to Almaty to drop it off, and had a nice dinner.

What a spot! The canyon was insaneFound a little plush character. I think he’s studio ghibli We went an interesting route down, but at the bottom the river was spectacular Cheeky selfie!

The next morning was our last of our short time in Almaty, we had a quick breakfast before finding a driver to take us back to the border of Kyrgyzstan, on our way to Osh!